Conan Film Rights Go to Millennium

Millennium Films has acquired the rights to make a new series of films based on Robert E. Howard’s mythical conqueror Conan the Barbarian.

Paradox Entertainment president-CEO Fredrik Malmberg chose Millennium after extricating the rights from Warner Bros. last spring and putting them on the market with strict progress-to-production provisions in mid-June.

Malmberg will produce with Millennium’s Avi Lerner, Boaz Davidson, Joe Gatta and George Furla. Millennium either will fully finance or partner with a distributor, with discussions to begin this week.

The company’s aim is to start production by next spring.

The franchise that launched the film career of Arnold Schwarzenegger in its first big screen go-round.

Millennium is in production on the Al Pacino-Robert De Niro starrer Righteous Kill and the Sylvester Stallone starrer John Rambo, but the Conan movie will be the most ambitious project it has mounted.

The new version will be more faithful to Howard’s original creation than were the Schwarzenegger films.